Where in the World Am I and How Did I Get Here?

A very short piece of fiction.

For a moment, Leo did not move. He couldn't. Something really extraordinary had just happened to him One moment, he was sitting at a table at Starbucks drinking his customary coffee, munching on his scone and reading the New York Times. The next moment, he found himself sitting at what appeared to be a bus stop. The people around him were speaking English... but not American English and they dressed a bit differently then the folks did in Houston. This street was definitely not in Houston or Texas or even the United States.

He tried to gather his thoughts and try to make some sense of this. "They have an English accent," he thought to himself. "England. So maybe I am in England."He had seen a street like this once. Leo searched his memory. Had it been in a movie maybe? A movie...? "Oh yes. Now I remember. It was in Love, Actually," he recalled, "in the scene in which the Prime Minister is going door to door to try to find out where the gir with whoml he has fallen in love lives." So it was England.

He had seen a street like this once. Leo searched his memory. Had it been in a movie maybe? A movie...? "Oh yes. Now I remember. It was in Love, Actually," he recalled, "in the scene in which the Prime Minister is going door to door to try to find out where the girl he has fallen in love with lives." So it was England.

He stood up and shivered a little. There was a slight chill in the air. He looked to his left and across the street and to the right. All the houses were scrunched together, one next to the other as far as the eye could see. Row houses. He had see houses like that in Boston... but this definitely wasn't Boston. No one here had that signature "Baaston" accent. So where the hell was he? Was this really a street somewhere in England?

The people around him were moving towards the curb as a bus approached from the left. It was one of those double-decker buses he had seen in movies and photos. Definitely British. So, one question answered. He stood back from the crowd as everyone else was boarding the bus. Better he should stay right here and figure out what the hell was happening to him.

Leo was the sort of fellow who always had to be in control of his life and this was very disconcerting to him to not even know where he was and what he was doing here.

Suddenly, he became aware that he was holding something in his right hand. He looked and discovered that he was holding a photograph of a row house just like the ones on this particular street. It was a three story affair, dark brown brick and definitely very old. He studied the house trying to recall if he had ever been there before? No, not that he could recall.

He decided to sit back down on the bench again. Seemed to be as good a thing to do as anything else under the circumstances. "This is really weird. I have absolutely no idea of what is happening to me."

Suddenly, he became very concerned. "I hope I remembered to bring my passport!..." He caught himself immediately after thinking that. "I cannot believe that I just thought that. Here I am... somewhere... in a totally surreal situation, and I am starting to stress out over whether or not I brought my passport!... For God's sake, Leo, get a grip on yourself."

Once more composed, he reassessed his situation. "This is totally ridiculous. Totally. I hope that nobody put something weird into my coffee, because this is getting completely out of hand."

So he just sat there for a bit, waiting to see if this street and the houses and the people all around him would just go away... and he would once again find himself reading his paper and drinking his coffee. But nothing changed.

Leo stood up again and surveyed the street more closely. He scanned the houses on the other side of the street to see if any one of them seemed to be familiar. Starting with the houses on the left, his eyes moved from one house to the next. When he reached the house which was directly across the street, he stopped. Leo tilted his head a bit to the right, as was his habit. He glanced down at the photo and back at the house. It was the same house. It was the same house!

"Go knock on the door and see what happens. Can't be any stranger that what has happened so far."

After checking to see that no traffic was coming from either way, he crossed the street. He walked up the six steps to the landing at the top and rang the doorbell. He heard footfalls and then the lock being disengaged. The door opened. An old lady with gray hair and a pleasant demeanor stood there, dressed in a pale blue house dress with small white flowers. She momentarily studied him and then said, "Good afternoon. How can I help you?"

"I am sorry to disturb you. I am not exactly certain where I am." He paused, feeling very awkward, but then continued. "You see, I found myself on this street... and I am not exactly sure how I got here and I was holding a photo of your house...." Another pause. " I know this probably sounds crazy. The thing is I am trying to figure out what is going on and the only clue I have is that I have a photo of your house. I thought maybe you might know something that could help me." He stopped. She must think he is a lunatic... a total crazy, and in a moment she was going to call the police.

"I see," she said, thoughtfully. After a brief pause, during which she seemed to have made a decision about him, she continued, "Well, you do seem to have a problem, don't you. My name is Emily Beasley. And your name is....?"

"Leo. Leo Walters, Mrs. Beasley," he answered.

"Well, Leo Walters, why don't you come in and we'll have some tea. Perhaps between the two of us, we can begin to sort this thing out."

A Stranger Even To Myself

A lot happening today. Preparations for Mom's 98th birthday. My brother, Charles and Jackie, his wife, in town. A personal commitment for tomorrow night.

Had dinner with them and with my mother tonight. This evening felt a little strange. Over the last several years, I have transformed myself into this pretty efficient person... this administrative kind of fellow. And the sort of place I find myself in often now and preoccupied with is a bank. Who is this person? I do not know this person. My demeanor has changed. The way I handle myself has changed. Why? More than just the anti-depressant I take and the therapy I went through and the auto crash... I have become another person. I have made a major paradigm shift in my thinking.

Tonight I was trying to remember what it was like to be the old me. I couldn't.

I have become the person I set out to become. A consistent person. A reliable person. A self-assured and confident person. A more disciplined person. A happier person. A more stable person. A person who has achieved some balance in his life. A person who has developed a sixth sense about having reached a point at which his plate is beginning to get too full. A person who is prioritizing and scheduling only what needs to be done or which he enjoys doing, for the most part.

Who the hell is this person? Now when I look in the mirror, I do not exactly recognize the person that I see. Of course it is me. But it is the new improved me. And it is only now, after the changes, that I am beginning to fully understand who and what I have become. Not so much a stranger in a strange land, as much as a stranger inhabiting my body... a stranger I must come to know and understand, because that stranger is me.

Some Random Thoughts, Sunday Apr 29 2007

A Kaleidoscope World

The world is changing so fast and the rate of change is accelerating. Especially in technology. And with technological change our culture evolves and morphs completely beyond recognition sometimes. What we assume to be true or real overnight becomes untrue or invalid. Our cultural landscape becomes unrecognizable and with changes coming constantly and so quickly, we can easily become disoriented. It is as if we are trying to make sense of our world each day by looking through the eyepiece of a kaleidoscope and trying to make sense of the changing pattern of colors and shapes that we see.

The Tsunami World of the Information Age

Pundits have called this time the age of information. So much information. Too much information for any one person to ever be able to process. When my family and I visited Disneyworld in Orlando, one of our group and I took in the ESPN pub on the Boardwalk, near Epcot. On the walls throughout the watering hold were about fifty television screens, each with a different ball game or sport event. It was just too much to try to take in, so I had to filter out all but one screen that had a specific football game. It would have been simply overwhelming to try to absorb the input about each game or event being telecast in that room.

Except for a few isolated places on this very small planet, there are few places in which we will not be bombarded by images and voices and sounds from every angle. The danger is that at every turn we will be swept off our feet by a torrant of images and sounds and words. Every time we try to pick ourselves up and regain our psychological balance, another wave sweeps in and throws us off balance yet one more time. What is real? Who is telling the truth? Does the data support the dire predictions we are presented with? What is important and what is insignificant? Who is good and who is bad? What is good and what is bad? What is real and what is just a mirage? I think this is less an age of information than it is an age of misinformation. Overloaded with conflicting claims, we must sort through all the media noise to sort out a truth that works for us. We probably "know" little more than we did before, but we certainly have a lot more alleged "facts" to sort through before we can settle upon our own sense of the reality of the situation.

Choosing Our Words Carefully

Our uttered words, our written words, the images we create... they all can hurt and injure us and others and our world. We have to choose our words carefully and we have to be aware of the effect upon others that the images we create have. Carefully tailored words can lead a nation into a needless war. Carefully chosen words can bring healing to other people. Images and words, well crafted, can bring understanding or can instigate others to act on hatred, prejudice and the aggressive impulse. A song softly sung can lull a child to sleep. A song earnestly sung can mobilize an entire nation to betray whatever civilized impulses and become a nation of morally devoid and ethically twisted individuals. Deutchland. Deutchland. Uber alles.

We must ever be mindful of what we say and what we do, because every word we utter and every action we take will change the world, if only by a little. We cannot take back anything we say or do. The genie, either beneficent or malevolent, will have already escaped the bottle and what follows will become a matter of recorded history. When something bad happens because of us, we will lamely say, "But I did not mean for that to happen. I certainly did not want that to happen. Can't you see that?" Few will believe us, and rightly so.

Our world and human society... everything exists because of a delicate balance of many things. One misstep on our part and that balance can be disturbed. Like a tight rope walker, we have to move though this life a bit more carefully, taking great care in how we act... in what we say, lest something that we do will will become that last straw that breaks the camel's back.